Hello humankindness™

Encountering Chaos And Kindness In An Ebola Ward

by Joshua Tuscan

My journey to Sierra Leone and Kenema Hospital to serve as a physician in the Ebola Treatment Unit (ETU) started more than a month before I actually traveled there. It is as much a mental journey as a physical one. What was once a textbook understanding of the virus quickly became an intimate experience of losing many around me to the disease. Before I left, traveling to West Africa to take care of these patients was an abstract humanitarian imperative for me. Now that I’m back, having seen what I have seen, I could never forgive myself if I did not make another trip.